"But they [young people] are the healthiest and most educated young people in Cuba's history. For that many of them say they have Castro and his socialist revolution to thank....if they long for the sweeping changes occurring in Eastern Europe, they are not saying so publicly....To the extent he can, Castro has been rewarding young people. For example, on their return home [from Angola], the 300,000 Cubans sent to Africa were first in line for housing, jobs, and education. Such benevolence breeds dedication, some young people say."-- NBC reporter Ed Rabel, April 1 Nightly News.

Runners-up:

"It's almost impossible for most Americans to understand a government organization that monitors everything, that has tentacles reaching into all aspects of Soviet life. But keep in mind the KGB is like a combination of the CIA, the FBI, of the National Security Agency, the Secret Service, and the Coast Guard, too. From Lenin to Stalin to Gorbachev, its members have been a proud corps of the national elite, intelligent, talented, and fully in control. The officers of the KGB, in fact, decided reform was necessary long before Gorbachev came to power."-- Diane Sawyer on ABC's Prime Time Live, August 2.

"But Ortega, an irritant to Carter, became an obsession to Reagan, who saw him as an instrument of Moscow. The Contra rebels were the blunt instrument in Ronald Reagan's attack on Daniel Ortega. Reagan's dogged support for the Contras forever marked and ultimately scarred his foreign policy....Many of the Contras were former members of the Nicaraguan National Guard, Somoza's enforcers. They were brutal, often inept...It has been one of the longest and most traumatic chapters in U.S. history in Latin America, and tonight it seems to be ending, and ending in a way Ronald Reagan never could have imagined."-- NBC reporter John Dancy the day after Nicaragua's election, February 26
Nightly News.

"Free at last, the temptation is to exercise all that freedom -- fully, quickly and sometimes unwisely. Often, it means biting the hand that freed and fed you. Lithuania is the latest and most ludicrous example....There is little more logic to Lithuania being permitted to unilaterally and unlawfully declare its independence from the USSR than there would be for Texas to secede from the USA. Both were grabbed during a war. But both owe much to their modern-day mother country. Gorby has a right to feel livid about Lithuania. The way you might feel about a runaway child, tempted to beat him within an inch of his life."-- USA Today founder Al Neuharth in an April 20 column.

Runners-up:

"Yes, somehow, Soviet citizens are freer these days: freer to kill one another, freer to hate Jews, freer to express themselves...But doing away with totalitarianism and adding a dash of democracy seems an unlikely cure for what ails the Soviet system."-- CBS This Morning co-host Harry Smith, February 9.

"Many Soviets viewing the current chaos and nationalist unrest under Gorbachev look back almost longingly to the era of brutal order under Stalin."-- Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, February 11.

"Soviet people have become accustomed to security if nothing else. Life isn't good here, but people don't go hungry, homeless; a job has always been guaranteed. Now all socialist bets are off. A market economy looms, and the social contract that has held Soviet society together for 72 years no longer applies. The people seem baffled, disappointed, let down. Many don't like the prospect of their nation becoming just another capitalist machine."-- CNN Moscow reporter Steve Hurst on PrimeNews, May 24.

"Attempting to defect will no longer be a severely punishable offense, but will be known as 'border trespass,' subject only to a minor penalty. And the death penalty, now applied to 34 offenses, will be retained only for those that involve direct 'betrayal' of the communist state and the social order."
-- Christian Science Monitor correspondent Eric Bourne, September 12.

vs.

"A reminder from Eastern Europe today that not all has changed. In Albania today, border guards shot and killed a four-year-old girl when they opened fire on a group of Albanians trying to cross into Yugoslavia. Albania is the last of the totalitarian states in Eastern Europe."-- Peter Jennings on World News Tonight, same day.